HP introduces low-cost 8-inch Android tablet

HP is slowly building out its collection of Android tablets, quietly introducing the HP 8. The HP 8 is a moderately priced slate with good looks, but somewhat underwhelming specs that fall shy of its $169.99 price tag.

Physically, the tablet is nicely sized and attractive. It measures 7.8 by 5.3 by 0.31 inches and weighs 0.69 pounds. I like the white and silver finish, which looks a little less generic than the company’s line of Slate tablets. The 7.85-inch IPS LCD, on the other hand, features just 1024 x 768 pixel resolution, which works out to a grainy 163 pixels per inch.

The HP 8 is somewhat underpowered as well. It’s running on a quad-core chip from Chinese company Allwinner, which is something you don’t see every day. It has just 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage, though there’s a microSD card slot expandable up to an additional 32GB. The 3,800mAh battery is a bit small for the screen size.

The tablet is Wi-Fi only and connects via 802.11b/g/n. It runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, which is a few generations behind the latest KitKat software.

On the plus side, the HP 8 comes with 25GB of free lifetime cloud storage from Box. And the $169.99 price tag could make it attractive to new tablet buyers who like the look of the iPad mini, but don’t want to pay $399 for it.